Mr. Hamilton’s place was situated in a lovely country on the borders of Sussex and Surrey. Hanging woods, extensive oak copses mixed with birch, sandy lanes, hedges which are enlivened by large hollies with their glossy leaves and their red berries—wild patches of heath, studded with juniper bushes—fern and innumerable wild flowers in the shaws and dingles—banks blue with violets, and dells yellow with primroses, are the characteristics of that most enjoyable part of England. Belhanger, which was the name of his place, was in the Elizabethan style. A spacious hall, in which was an immense fire-place, surmounted by the antlers of some patriarchal stag, communicated with a large, low, oak dining-room, and through some smaller apartments to a drawing-room, which was hung with tapestry, and adorned with beautiful oak carving; the crossings of the beams in the ceiling were ornamented with wooden rosettes, in the most antique taste, while the rest of the room was provided with all the essentials requisite for modern comfort. A broad and massive staircase of black oak led, as is usual with buildings of that period, to a gallery on the upper floor, which extended the whole length of the south front, and which, with its two fire-places, and its innumerable windows of all shapes and sizes, admitting every ray of sun, was one of the most delightful winter apartments imaginable. The exterior of the mansion was as irregular as the most ardent lover of the picturesque could desire. It was built of grey-stone, and composed of gable-ends of every possible angle. As its name indicated, it was built upon the side of a hill, which had originally been covered with hanging woods. The woods had been partially cleared away near the house, and a sloping lawn led down to the small but romantic deer-park in the valley. Ellen thought Belhanger the very _beau ideal_ of an English manorial house, and, if she had not been too much in love, and too happy in the affections of such a man as Mr. Hamilton, to find room in her heart for emotions that were not connected with him, she would have thought the possession of such a place as Belhanger an additional pleasure. The poor people, too, were a more primæval race than those who have not lived in that part of the world would expect to find at so short a distance from the metropolis. The bright blue smock-frocks which are there the common dress of the men, and the red cloaks which the women still wear, gave a picturesque appearance to the peasant congregation as they trooped out of church, and wound down the steep road, by the beech-crowned knoll. Ellen was charmed with all she saw, but, perhaps, she would have been equally charmed had her home been less perfect in itself, for she had that within which would have made a cottage appear to her a palace—a desert a paradise.